


Veritas

by meetmeatthecoda



Category: The Blacklist (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Anon Prompt, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Lizzington - Freeform, set before 8.02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28067433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meetmeatthecoda/pseuds/meetmeatthecoda
Summary: There’s no verbal answer, just more rustling and another thump, before she hears something that makes her blood run cold.A sharp crash of shattering glass.“I’ll be right there.”Response fic to an anon prompt over on tumblr asking for vulnerable!Red and caretaker!Liz. Liz receives a troubling phone call from Red and wastes no time in getting to him. But she doesn't find him as she expects. Set before 8.02. Lizzington.
Relationships: Elizabeth Keen/Raymond Reddington
Comments: 18
Kudos: 87





	Veritas

The shrill ring of her cell phone startles Liz out of a dead sleep. She bolts upright in bed, throwing a hand sideways toward her bedside table to fumble for the phone. She snatches it up and jabs the screen through squinting eyes, temporarily blinded by the bright light in the otherwise pitch-black room.

“Keen,” she mumbles blearily.

For a long moment all she hears is rustling.

Liz rubs her eyes and frowns, pulling the phone back to glance briefly at the caller ID.

‘Nick’s Pizza’ shines back at her.

Suddenly wide awake, Liz presses the phone back to her face.

“Red?”

More rustling, this time with a low thump or two.

_“Red?”_ she repeats more forcefully, wariness starting to creep into her bones.

There’s silence for a tense moment.

“Lizzie…”

It’s a quiet mumble at best, but clearly her name, and the pain audible in his voice sends a paralyzing shockwave through her.

(And the fact that it’s her long-lost nickname, _his_ nickname, slipping out of his mouth after who knows how long, has her heart stuttering in her chest.)

“Red, are you alright?”

There’s no verbal answer, just more rustling and another thump, before she hears something that makes her blood run cold.

A sharp crash of shattering glass.

“I’ll be right there.”

And she’s hanging up and moving before she can even think, nearly falling out of bed in her haste, stumbling into the nearest pair of pants, throwing a hoodie on over her tank top, grabbing her keys and gun, and out the door within minutes, only one goal in mind.

Getting to Red.

Liz drives like a madwoman, panic roaring at the back of her mind at the thought of what trouble Red must be in for him to call _her,_ considering how at odds they’ve been over everything.

(And she chooses to ignore the fact that she’s dropping everything to race to his safehouse at two o’clock in the morning, even when she’s actively working with her mother to undermine him, just because he called in distress. Her mother wouldn’t be happy. Oh well, Katarina doesn’t have to know.)

Liz considers throwing on her police lights to make some time, but there’s barely any cars on the road at this hour between her building and his Bethesda apartment, so she decides to risk the traffic violation.

She turns off her headlights and floors it.

Liz gets there in record time, leaving her car badly parked and unlocked in her haste, racing up the stairs on high alert with her gun at the ready. She slows as she comes out on Red’s floor, cautiously exiting the stairwell and creeping down the hallway, edging up to his door.

Carefully, she tries the knob.

It’s unlocked.

Her heart gives another anxious stutter in her chest before she takes a deep breath, opens the door, and slips into the apartment.

It’s dark inside, no lights on anywhere in the front rooms, and Liz’s throat tightens. Raising her gun up to chest level, she moves silently into the apartment, her eyes wide and watching for any movement. She doesn’t hear anything but an oddly faint, intermittent tinkling noise.

Liz leans around the corner into the kitchen, frowning when she still sees no one, and then moves forward into the living room, peeking around the couch to find –

Red, sitting in the armchair by the window with a glass in his hand.

“Red?” Liz quickly sweeps the room and, seeing no one else there, lowers her gun. “Are you alright?”

Red, for his part, looks up to squint at her, looking rather cold and mildly confused.

“Elizabeth,” he greets stiffly, his tone so much different than on the phone, making Liz frown. “What are you doing here?”

(And there’s something odd sounding about his voice that she can’t quite identify.)

“What am I doing here?” she repeats, confused. “You called me, said my name, sounded like you were…in trouble.”

Red’s brow furrows for a moment, visibly thinking hard, before he nods.

“Oh, yes, I did. I called you.”

(And he seems to be having trouble enunciating his words, sounding very unlike his usual articulate self.)

Liz’s gaze flits around the apartment, searching for his phone until she spies it across the room on the coffee table.

This doesn’t make sense.

“What broke?” she asks. “I heard something shatter.”

Again, Red takes a curiously long moment to respond, simply staring at her before seeming to remember he should speak.

“Hmm? Oh, something fell. Over there.”

(And he almost sounds as if he’s blending his words together, speaking in one long sentence instead of separate words.)

He gestures vaguely to the table against the wall where a bottle of scotch sits, shards of glass littered all around it. Liz looks back to the tumbler in his hand – empty but for several melting cubes of ice – and the pieces finally start to fit together.

The odd phone call, the shattering of glass, the sitting in the dark, the tinkling of ice, the slow response time.

The slurred speech.

“You’re drunk.”

(And she’s never seen him like this, has always known him to hold his liquor no matter how much he consumes, and she’s completely aghast at the amount of alcohol he must have ingested to be acting like this.)

Red, however, looks almost offended.

“Drunk? No, I’m not _drunk_. I’ve been just been having…a nightcap, that’s all.”

“A nightcap?” Liz repeats incredulously, glancing back to the bottle on the table, already half empty. “Singular?”

“Yes,” he snaps, suddenly sounding testy. “Oh, I forgot to offer…how rude of…would you like a drink?”

The half-formed thought is barely out of his mouth before he’s pushing unsteadily up from his armchair, staggering upright so quickly that Liz instinctively moves forward to help him.

But he moves past her, stumbling to the scotch, picking up the bottle before looking around blankly for the second glass, visibly confused.

“Red, it’s broken.”

He blinks a few times, only now observing the glass shards crunching unpleasantly under his shoes.

“Oh, yes, well, never mind, you can use mine.”

“No, Red, I don’t want –”

But he’s already unstopping the bottle and starting to pour, missing the glass by a few inches and splashing it onto the table instead.

“Whoops,” he mumbles to himself, frowning disapprovingly at the bottle before giving up and shrugging carelessly, leaving the glass on the table and simply taking the whole bottle with him instead.

That’s it.

(And seeing him so incapacitated, so oddly nonsensical and vulnerable in ways she’s never been privy to before, has her skin prickling uncomfortably, itching to protect him. Somehow. Despite everything.)

“Red, I think that’s enough, don’t you?” and she stuffs her gun into the back of her pants before she makes the mistake of stepping forward and reaching out for the bottle clutched in his hand.

His mood shifts on a dime, becoming angry so quickly that it startles her.

_“No!”_

She jumps backward, her hands raised instinctively in a gesture of surrender in response to his face, suddenly contorted in a nasty expression that she’s never seen before.

“Red,” she gasps, more confused than ever. “I’m just trying to help you!”

“Oh, well you’ll forgive me if I don’t quite remember what that feels like!” he spits.

(And even though he’s so obviously not himself, swaying unsteadily on the spot and mumbling his way through the word ‘remember’, well, it still hurts.)

Liz clenches her fists, trying to ignore his cruel – if truthful – statement, and moves toward the kitchen.

“Well, at least let me make you some coffee –”

“I don’t want coffee!” he snaps irritably, and she whips around halfway to the kitchen to see him trailing after her, still defensively clutching the bottle of scotch and glaring at her with steely eyes.

“Well, what _do_ you want, Red?” she demands, frustrated.

“I wanna know why you k-keep betraying me!” he bursts unexpectedly, and Liz blinks in surprise, taken aback.

“I don’t deserve it!” he slurs, getting worked up, gesturing forcefully at her as her own anger starts to pulse through her veins.

(He doesn’t _deserve_ it? Everything that’s happened to her is _his fault_ , what universe is he _living in_ –)

And Liz opens her mouth to respond, unable to keep control of herself in the face of such a ridiculous statement, even as drunk as he is –

“How can you stand there and say such a thing when you _constantly_ –”

But Red is suddenly deflating as quickly as he got riled up, his posture sagging and head hanging, coming perilously close to letting the bottle slip out of his suddenly lax fingers as he mutters, half to himself and half to her.

“I just love you…”

(And it appears that not every drunken thing slipping out of his mouth tonight is false.)

Liz’s anger drains out of her in an instant, and she can only watch wordlessly as Red steps forward to carelessly shove the bottle of scotch into her hand and turn to wander toward the back hallway, leaving her standing there in his kitchen alone.

(And the sight of him shuffling defeatedly away from her, looking so bereft and hopeless, tugs ruthlessly at some place deep in her chest, dragging her forward to leave the bottle on the kitchen counter and chase after him, helpless.)

Liz follows the sound of his heavy footsteps to his bedroom, crossing the threshold in time to see him drunkenly struggling to step out of his dress shoes.

She sighs.

“Here, sit down…”

Liz moves forward to place a tentative hand on his shoulder and guide him to the bed. To her surprise, he lets her gently push him down to sit on the edge, just watching her quietly as she drops to her knees to untie his shoes. She tries to ignore the tingling feeling of his eyes on her, focusing instead on untangling his laces and ignoring his plaid socks, finally managing to tug the shoes off his feet and tuck them out of the way.

“Okay, lay down…”

Once again, Red obeys, tilting carelessly sideways until his head lands on the pillow, bending his knees and pulling his legs up in the fetal position, looking small and vulnerable on top of the covers. Liz’s throat tightens at the sight and she casts her gaze around the room to distract herself, searching for a blanket.

He looks cold.

Spying a quilt folded on top of the dresser, Liz stretches upward to grab it, unfolding and carefully fanning it out over Red, making sure the soft, blue material covers both his feet and shoulders.

(And the sheer act of caring for him this way, his eyes closed and disinterested as she _tucks him in_ has her heart aching in the strangest of ways, a mix of love and heartache and guilt that she _shouldn’t feel_ –)

Suddenly, Liz’s phone vibrates in her pocket.

She knows it’s Katarina – who else would be calling her at this hour if it’s not Red – and she immediately feels a prickling of irrational shame. Her hand twitches to her pocket as she gives Red one last glance and turns to go because oh, god, _what would Katarina think of her here_ –

“Lizzie…”

And he stops her in her tracks once again, whispering her name in that same desperate tone of voice that she has a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t ever supposed to hear, tugging at her heartstrings and stirring up feelings she had thought long since buried, as her phone continues to vibrate against her thigh –

“Stay…”

Liz squeezes her eyes shut, horribly torn between the mother who has recruited her and the man in bed behind her, because _how is she supposed to choose_ –

“For once...”

And Liz is pivoting on her heel, unable to resist Red’s pleading whisper for a second longer, those two brutally honest words cutting her to the quick, as she moves around the bed to the far side, slipping her own shoes off, simply refusing to think anymore as she climbs onto the bed next to Red, laying down carefully on her side just as his eyes open.

(Because it’s about time she listened to her heart instead of her brain.)

Red just looks at her, wide-eyed and incredulous, and she stares right back, wondering vaguely what he sees when he looks at her anymore. His eyes rove restlessly over her face until he cracks his lips open to speak again.

“I love your hair…” he murmurs, quiet and in awe and still drunk, and Liz holds very still as he raises a tentative hand to her face. “It always looks so soft…and warm.”

And, ever-so-gently, he runs his fingertips through her hair, starting at the root and letting the strands slip through his fingers to land softly back against her neck, all the while watching his own hand with disbelief.

(And the reverence with which he touches her – _her hair_ of all things – has incredulous tears gathering in her eyes, because what _on earth_ did she do to deserve this man’s unconditional love?)

“Are you always this sappy when you’re drunk?” Liz asks, breathless and sniffling.

Red makes two more silent passes over her hair, making her sigh quietly with pleasure at the sensation, before he shakes his head.

“No…” he murmurs, pulling his hand back and letting his eyes slip closed again. “I’m honest…”

And Liz watches him fall asleep, her attention rapt and gaze never wavering from him, feeling unspeakably grateful to be privy to the sight of his face slackening, the lines on his face disappearing, the years melting off him.

Only once she’s sure he’s asleep does she shift her gaze, scooting a little closer to him and tugging a little of his soft quilt over her body, reveling in his warmth and scent washing over her, content to watch over him while he rests, his eyelids fluttering gently in his sleep. Liz moves her hand the few scant inches across the mattress to him, brushing the back of her hand over his, just wanting to feel a little bit of his skin on hers, even as her phone starts to vibrate again in her pocket.

Slowly, so as not to wake him, Liz eases her other hand into her pocket to retrieve her phone, not even glancing at the screen as she ignores it, stretching blindly outward to put it on the bedside table.

She’ll call Katarina back tomorrow.

Right now?

Red needs her more.


End file.
